The reporter's arrest, trial, and sentencing have occurred in
total secrecy, while exact charges have never officially been
announced. Even after the signing of
the nuclear deal between Iran and a US-led group of six world
powers this past July, Tehran had given no indication that it
will consider releasing Rezaian unconditionally.

Because of the authoritarian and impenetrable nature of the
Iranian government, Rezaian is likely in prison for reasons
having little to do with anything he actually said or did.
Instead, he's behind bars to serve the perceived interests
of one of the regime's most important power centers.

On November 13, Business Insider interviewed a journalist with
first-hand insight into how Iran's powerful hardliners view
the news media and the outside world. He's someone who
experienced the regime at its worst.

Canadian-Iranian
journalist Maziar Bahari.Wikimedia
Commons

Maziar Bahari, a Canadian-Iranian reporter for Newsweek who lived
in Iran for 12 years, was arrested in June of 2009 amid the
country's "Green Revolution," in which hundreds of thousands of
people protested the fraudulent results of a presidential
election.

Freezing out the
media

As Bahari puts it, Iran was always a somewhat
uneasy environment for journalists.

"I had been interrogated by the ministry of intelligence in Iran
almost on a monthly basis whenever I was living there,"
Bahari told Business Insider. "But those interrogations were
somehow cordial. They would take you to a hotel, they would
feed you tea and coffee and oranges. It was to send a message
that we know where you live, we are reading and watching
what you do."

The Guard has helped chart Tehran's
confrontational and expansionist foreign policy, and its
members might fear losing their relevance in a
post-agreement landscape. This perceived vulnerability is likely
making the Guard even more determined to protect its
spheres of interest. It protects itself, in part, by keeping
Iran's media space as closed-off as possible.

Protesters
march during a silent demonstration against the results of the
Iranian presidential election in central Tehran on June 18,
2009.Reuters

Bahari wasn’t arrested in 2009 for anything that he had
actually done, he says, but because of what he represented to the
Guard, a mafia-like clique that seeks to preserve its
position of influence.

He said a combination of factors led to his arrest — including
his foreign connections, work with a prominent media platform,
and Iranian citizenship.

"The reason for my arrest and many other arrests in Iran did
not have to do anything with what I was creating," Bahari told
Business Insider. "It had to do with what I
was representing and the message they could send to other
people through my arrest.

"As someone who was prominent in Iran in terms of journalism
and documentary filmmaking they thought that through my arrest
they could send a message to a wide range of people: documentary
filmmakers, journalists, people who had worked with the
foreign media, people who had worked with foreign broadcasters —
and tell them that if they cross the line or do something that we
don’t like to do that this will happen to you," he added.

Something similar may be
happening with Rezaian, a US-Iranian dual citizen for a major
American newspaper with deep connections both inside and outside
of Iran.

'The lines are not clear in terms of anything in Iran'

Bahari believes the Guard’s mission is inevitably
self-defeating. While the Guard controls much of Iran's economy
and is instrumental in determining both its foreign policy and
preserving the country's clerical regime, Bahari believes
its level of oppression is unsustainable in today's Iran.

People in Iran, he says, are "becoming more modern and more in
touch with the rest of the world."

But this reality has also made the Guard even more determined —
and more dangerous. It's forced it to refine its methods of
oppression. It’s unclear who, or what, can rein it in.

Members
of Iran's Basij militia march during a parade to commemorate the
anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), in Tehran on
September 22, 2010.Reuters

A vital question after the nuclear deal is whether Iran's other
factions have the political capital or even the interest in
countering the Guard. Rezaian's case leads to some pessimistic
conclusions: He's been held far longer than Bahari and has been
both tried and sentenced in secret. And the Iranian
government doesn't appear to be viewing him any differently
than it would have before the nuclear deal.

"The Iranian government has a merchant, old-fashioned bazaar
or market mentality where everything is about haggling and
everything is regarded as an asset," Bahari said. "

So Jason Rezaian is not a journalist in prison. He is an
asset that is worth maybe two Iranians in prison,
three Iranians in prison, 10 Iranians in prison.
They're just haggling. They want to get the best price for
him."

A
prison guard stands along a corridor in Tehran's Evin prison on
June 13, 2006.Morteza
Nikoubazi/Reuters

And then there's the government's persecution of Iranian
journalists without influential foreign connections — like
the five journalists arrested
on November 5. That group included Afarin
Chitsaz, a foreign affairs columnist
considered close to the reformist Iranian president Hassan
Rouhani. That arrest might be a blunt attempt at
reminding Rouhani of where the true power in the regime lies —
and of what the Guard can still accomplish inside Iran
even when its policies are changing.

Bahari acknowledges that journalists like the ones arrested on
November 5 don't have the backing of prestigious publications or
business figures the way that he
and Rezaian did. They might not get the
courtesy of monthly meetings with the security services, or the
possibility of an international campaign for their freedom if
some elements of the regime see an advantage in imprisoning
them.

As nebulous as the Guard's rules of conduct ended up being
for Rezaianand Bahari,
they're even less clear for Iranian journalists without name
recognition or a global support network. It's the same for the
country writ large.

"The lines are not clear in terms of anything in Iran, and that’s
how the regime thrives and survives," Bahari says. "The
lines are shifting all the time and life is insecure for everyone
inside the country. And as a result the government can take
advantage of the insecurity that it’s creating."